


on key

by sidestep



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Banter, Dirty Talk, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), F/M, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Mutual Masturbation, Phone Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Season/Series 01, Second Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:02:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24746524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidestep/pseuds/sidestep
Summary: There’s a pause then that stretches out just a moment too long. The littletimostokin is typing…thing pops up, disappears, pops up, disappears again. And there it is—that tension, thatsomethingthat’s been hovering over them for the last three months. Because they’ve done this before. Not this specific thing, obviously, but this in general. This dance along the razor’s edge waiting for one of them to trip and fall one way or the other.
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 17
Kudos: 111





	on key

**Author's Note:**

> Tim/Sasha tag needed more horny content so I took matters into my own hands!
> 
> Content stuff to maybe keep in mind: brief instances of negotiation happening on the fly, but between two parties who already know and are comfortable with each other. Mild praise/degradation stuff, plus mentions of workplace sex (though voyeurism isn't the focus and it's all for the sake of dirty talk).
> 
> Hope you all enjoy!! :)

Sasha would like to think it’s because she’s tired. That’s her justification. It’s admittedly a flimsy one, but she’s more than willing to take what she can get these days, so. It’s because she’s tired. 

She’s also spent the last two days scrubbing through hours of CCTV footage from an A&E waiting room frame by frame, looking for anything that would a) explain why all twenty-eight of its occupants chose to get up and walk away, b) whether or not anything actually started melting/catching fire/exploding, and c) what happened to the unidentified burn victim (other than the _other_ burn victim with the weird tattoos stabbing him to death with a scalpel and reducing him to ash). 

There’s also the matter of the massive human eye that blinks into view for exactly one frame and then never shows up again throughout the rest of the hours of footage, but she’s willing to overlook that for now. 

She rewinds the footage back to the arrival of Gerard Keay and Some Guy and watches again. The forms of all the people in the room are blocky and slow-moving because of the poor camera quality, and watching them lulls her into a sort of boredom-induced fugue stage.

Anyways, the potent mixture of boredom and exhaustion is enough to drive her to pick up her phone as the silent footage plays over her laptop and idly scroll through her apps, half-watching the computer screen. 

She really doesn’t think there’s anything else to be gained from another scrub through, but Jon’s gotten on their asses about sloppy statement followup enough recently that she’d rather be safe than sorry. If she can honestly say she’s watched all of the footage three times and found only tenuous corroborating evidence then, well, even better. She’s not sucking up to Jon—Christ, why would she, the job should’ve been hers and he knows it; she’s got no reason to play teacher’s pet—but she’d rather avoid the lecture if possible. 

So she checks her email—predictably nothing, barring the regular spam—and confirms Twitter’s the mess it’s always been and always will be. Minor celebrities are back on their bullshit, some podcaster somewhere is doing a charity drive for something. Thrilling as usual. Facebook, then: her aunt is retiring later this year and posts a countdown update nightly (143 days away!). A friend from uni is getting married in the fall. Somebody has a cute dog. She’s not friends with many people on Facebook, as it turns out. She might be more motivated to change this fact if she ever checked the app for any reason other than to procrastinate.

It’s with some reluctance that she turns to Instagram, but truly anything would be better than watching Lesere Saraki running in and out of an empty room with increasing panic. Sasha doesn’t have anything against the app, per se. It’s fine. It’s functional. It shows pictures of things (as advertised). It’s not like she’s following a lot of people anyway, beyond The Onion, a few friends, and the obligatory meme page or two. 

Regardless, it’s 2 AM, so it’s late enough at night that not much has happened since she last checked three hours ago. American Instagram is finally kicking into gear, being 8 PM in New York, but she doesn’t follow enough Americans for that to make much difference. She’s about to give it up for a lost cause and resign herself to another few hours of black-and-white hospital security footage when she scrolls back up to the top, refreshes the page, and. Well. 

Because she is not a teenager, she wouldn’t call it a _thirst trap_. She’s better than that. 

Except it is absolutely, in fact, a thirst trap. There’s literally no other term for the fucking photo Tim’s posted. 

It’s not like it’s subtle, either. He’s up in front of his bathroom mirror—classy—with his foot propped up on the counter by the sink so you can see the flex of his thigh, twisting his torso in the opposite direction to face the mirror fully. His shorts are—alright, they’ve got to be women’s running shorts or something, because they don’t fit even remotely correctly. They’re grey and soft-looking, maybe sweatpants material, and they aren’t too small or anything, but they _clearly_ weren’t built for what he’s got; his thighs are bursting out of them and with the way his leg is craned up she can definitely see some ass, not that she’s complaining or anything. Because of the angle, she can’t see the front of his pelvis, but she doubts the thin, stretchy fabric is doing a whole lot to hide the line of his cock. Which is—a thought to have. 

Her eyes travel further up. He’s wearing a crop top, also poorly fitted, with its sleeves cut off. It’s plain white and thin and clingy enough that she can somehow see the outline of his pecs through the shirt, and he’s got an arm lifted up (because of course he does) to reveal his toned stomach and the dark line of hair leaning down to the hem of his shorts. The hand attached to said arm is buried in his hair, ostensibly resting casually on his head but she can see how his arm is tensed, bicep flexing and tendons popping out in his forearm, fingers tightened like he’s pulling his own hair. His head’s tilted back too to show off the muscles of his neck that she wants to scrape her teeth along—Jesus _Christ,_ he’s really going for it on this one. His black hair is disheveled too in a way that only makes her want to mess it up more, and he’s got a cocky grin quirked at the camera like he knows it. 

Also, again, not subtle. The caption is “my new gym shorts shrunk in the wash :(”. Sure, Timothy. 

It’s a lot, that’s all. It’s explicitly everything she’s been doing her goddamn best to ignore for the last three months. 

Sasha double-taps the photo anyway before she can think better of it. Thinks for a second, and hey, in for a penny, in for a pound; she screenshots it too. For future reference. Fuck it, right? 

She hovers her thumb over the screen for a moment. What she should do at this point is turn the phone off, put it on her nightstand, try _very_ hard to ignore the warmth curling low in her gut, and get back to the 3 AM Spooky Hospital Show. 

What she actually does at this point is press the little arrow button to send the post to @timostokin. 

_you know this is, like, your public account, right?_

_did you expect me to make a finsta to post my lewds to or something?_

_what the hell is a finsta_

_whatever_

_so you admit they’re lewds?_

_sure why not_

_what is this an interrogation?_

_all i’m saying is that i’m pretty sure jon follows you_

_you know, our boss? jonathan sims? about 5’4” and kinda judgey?_

_he hasn’t posted since 2015 i’m really not that worried about him seeing it lol_

_but fine, point taken_

_it’s deleted_

_now all my followers will be deprived of my beautiful face :(_

_strangely enough your face didn’t actually seem to be the focus of that post_

_sorry_

_*my beautiful body_

_yknow_

_that pic was up for like_

_a minute and a half_

_and @sashamjamess was def among the 3 likes_

_what, can i not like my friends’ photos?_

_when you slide into my dms to lecture me about them?_

_debatable_

_well i’m not going to silence myself when i have something to say_

_yeah yeah i know you never would_

There’s a pause then that stretches out just a moment too long. The little _timostokin is typing…_ thing pops up, disappears, pops up, disappears again. And there it is—that tension, that _something_ that’s been hovering over them for the last three months. Because they’ve done this before. Not this specific thing, obviously, but this in general. This dance along the razor’s edge waiting for one of them to trip and fall one way or the other. 

It happened once. Just once. They were at Sasha’s flat, and they were pleasantly tipsy but not quite drunk on her couch, and his hand fell heavy and warm on her thigh and she stopped laughing and he stopped laughing, and she said _do you wanna—?_ and he didn’t even let her finish, just said _yeah, I—God, yeah, Sash—_ because they were friends and they were curious and they figured one fuck just late and just tipsy enough on a Friday night would sate their curiosity so they could go back to their base state. But the next morning rolled around. That was the point at which she was expecting them both to high-five and go on their merry ways, _wham bam thank you ma’am_ but a little more friendly and “respect women-y”, in Tim’s terms. 

However, it turned out sexual and romantic tension _was_ their base state. Boy was _that_ a hell of a revelation. 

She froze him out then. She’s not proud of the fact, but she couldn’t afford to get tangled up in a romantic relationship with her colleague even if he _was_ her best friend (which he was. And is). Especially with the head archivist position up for grabs. 

And then she didn’t get the job. And then they got transferred to the Archives together. And then they had to rebuild their friendship knowing there was that ever-present possibility for more. They both knew it. The tension’s only been mounting over the last three months, the more they work on cases together, the more nights he spends on her couch or vice versa, the more evenings they go out drinking after work. But they haven’t done anything about it because—because— 

Hard to remember now, really. All her careful rationalizations feel pretty irrelevant at the moment. 

_dyou have something to say about it?_

Sasha… considers. She does have something to say about it. Several somethings. 

_maybe_

_well, i’m all ears, babe_

And that’s the line crossed. Undeniably. He’s just waiting for her on the other side. 

_were the pictures for me ?_

_like specifically_

_maybe i was just feelin myself_

_not an answer, tim_

The response takes a while again. But finally:

_yeah_

_they were_

_i was hoping you’d see them sooner rather than later so i could take them off my page lol_

_not that i think i’d get fired for some racy pics, but_

_i prefer these things to be between me and my partners yknow_

She elects to ignore that last message, the _partners_ thing, but she files it away for the inevitable so-what-are-we-really conversation. 

_and what if i hadn’t seen them right away?_

_would you have sent them to me direct? are you that desperate?_

Her screen says he’s typing, but she’s in it now, so:

_or would you have just left them up?_

_let everyone see how much of a slut you are for however long it took me to take notice?_

Sasha stops for a second to breathe out a long, shaky breath. She doesn’t do this a lot, or ever really, and it’s kind of a gamble but she figures it’s pretty fucking high reward for the given risk. God, she hopes she hasn’t fucked up with that last bit; they haven’t exactly gotten a chance to negotiate. 

It’s just that, well, you learn some shit when you’ve been unreasonably close friends with someone for over a year. She knows Tim hates being seen as the office whore, but he’s drunkenly told her he’s far from opposed to name-calling and hot people being mean to him. Anyway, he knows she doesn’t actually think of him that way. And she half-remembers the startled moan he’d let out months ago when she slid her fingers into his hair and _pulled,_ how he’d squirmed and flushed when she called him her bitch and her prettyboy in turns— 

_oh so we’re doing this!!!!!!! ok!!!!! fuck!!!!!!!!!!_

She snorts in spite of herself. 

_yeah_

_picked up on that, did you?_

_well im told im very smart and observational_

_also pretty_

_:)_

_if you want praise you’re gonna have to do better than that, babe_

_fuck_

_yeah_

_wanna earn it_

_please_

_god, you’re easy_

_you know it!_

_yknow we could call each other_

_make it easier on both of us_

_it’d be real hard to text you and jerk off at the same time_

_hey you know what else is hard?_

_oh fuck off_

_yeah you can call me if you want_

Sasha lays her phone down, closes her laptop and sets it to the side—sorry, Lesere Saraki—and turns out her bedside lamp. Blinks up into the dark. She’d settled in for the night before starting all this, wearing sweatpants and a loose tshirt, nestled beneath her duvet. It’s already far too warm, and she feels more awake than she has in months. And she waits, keeping her breathing as even as she can. 

When her phone finally vibrates, she still startles as if that wasn’t what she’d been waiting for for the last minute and a half, and she still waits for it to ring out twice before picking up and turning on speakerphone. 

Tim speaks first. “Hi.” He sounds breathless. Breathless and uncertain. 

“Hi,” she says. She can feel a delirious, hysterical sort of laugh building in her throat that she chokes back as much as she can. 

“So—” 

“How about we wait until later to second-guess?” she rushes out. 

He lets out a surprised laugh. “Really? Thought you’d be the one advocating for responsible adult communication—” 

“I’ve never honestly communicated in my life, Tim. Listen, if I think about this too hard, I’m gonna back out, and I really don’t want to do that, so—” 

“Seriously, Sash, are you sure about this?” he asks, quieter. 

“I’m sure,” she confirms, forcing her voice steady. “Are you?”

“Yep!” She can hear the grin in his voice. “Well! That’s enough negotiation for me!” 

Even though she knows he can’t see her, she rolls her eyes fondly. “Glad to hear it. So, do we—” 

“Wish there was how-to on phone sex,” Tim mutters, echoing her thoughts. “Shoulda read up.” 

“What, in the ninety seconds between messaging me and calling me?” 

“I don’t know, there might’ve been a crash course somewhere—” 

“Jesus Christ,” she mumbles. “If that John Green video exists, I _don’t_ want to know about it.” 

“It might be good.”  
  


“Frankly, I’m unwilling to take that chance.” She clears her throat meaningfully. _“Anyways.”_

“Right! Right.” He chuckles a bit. “God, we’re not good at this, are we?” 

She laughs too in spite of herself. “Not really, no.” A moment of dead air. “Uh—what are you… wearing?” 

“Holy shit, Sasha, the _cliché—”_

“Oh, like you had anything better lined up.” 

“Fair point. But I mean, you _did_ see the picture, right?” That smile again, curling at the edges of his words.

She refuses to give any ground. “I did. Are you still wearing the shirt?” He gives a hum of affirmation. “Take it off.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” he laughs through the tinny phone speaker. Sasha can hear the rustle of fabric too close to the mic as he shifts around. 

“That alright?” 

“What, the light domming or taking off the shirt?” he grins, audibly settling back in. 

“Both, I guess,” she snorts. 

“It’s a yes to both,” Tim confirms. 

“Mm. Thought so, all things considered.” 

Another laugh. “What tipped you off? On the first one, that is.” 

Sasha sighs and trails her hand down to her sweatpants, not doing anything yet, just letting her fingertips rest lightly on the skin just beneath. “I mean, where to start? You push back against being ordered around, that’s just who you are, but I think you _like_ it. At least in the right contexts. I’m pretty sure I can, you know, create the right context for you. And anyways, I remember the look on your face. The first time we fucked, when I ordered you to get on the bed. I was joking, sort of, but your expression changed and you went all quiet, so. Didn’t want to pursue it then, first time and all, but—yeah, I had you pegged as someone who’d enjoy something like this pretty early on. Way too eager to comply with me, even back in research.” 

His breath leaves him in a rush, and when he speaks again, he sounds strained. “You can have me pegged anytime.” 

She chuckles; she can’t help it. “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Sasha can hear him breathing over the speaker, each inhale and exhale carefully even but with an obvious shudder. She lets him go on for another couple of seconds before speaking again. “Are you touching yourself?”

“Y-yeah.” 

“Stop.” 

He actually _whines,_ so quietly she can barely hear it. _“Fuck,_ Sasha.” 

“Did you?” she asks, sharp, and slips her fingers under the waistband of her panties. God, she’s already so wet; she can’t remember the last time she felt like this, every nerve alight. He’s not even in the fucking room. 

“Yes,” he says, breath coming out in a hiss. 

“Good. Just wanted to check,” she tells him, allowing herself a grin. On the other end of the line, there’s a breathy, disbelieving laugh. “You can keep going now if you’d like.” 

“‘If you’d like,’” he mocks, the tone of which somewhat undercut by the choked-off moan of relief that follows seconds later. “Yeah, I would like, I think. God. Always knew you’d get off on this, you know. You’re that type.” Another rustle of fabric; she can imagine the knowing curl of his smile even as he kicks his shorts off his legs fully. “You think you noticed me? It goes both ways, Sash. You like telling me what to do too much.” He chuckles, and she does too, but she’s cut off by a soft gasp as she slides her fingers down to her clit and begins to circle it lightly, teasing. “I’ve been watching. Listening. I think you know at this point I’d do anything you tell me to.” 

It takes Sasha a moment to remember she has to speak too. “You would, wouldn’t you?” 

“Mmhm,” Tim manages to get out. “You know it.” 

“Ha. Yeah, do you—do you know how long I’ve been wanting this? Th-thinking about something like it happening?” She keeps her thumb rubbing at her clit as delicately as she can bear to and slides a finger into herself, tries to stifle the reflexive noise she makes into her shirt but she can hear the sudden rasp of Tim’s breath in response. 

“No idea,” he says, voice rough. 

“A long time,” she informs him coolly and doesn’t explain further. She’s gratified to hear the huff of laughter seconds later. 

“Seriously.” 

“No, it really has been. I mean, not _quite_ since I met you—I was so determined, you know, to be the one person you couldn’t have had if you wanted—but it was, uh, a lost cause within about two weeks of knowing you. Saw you leaning over a desk in Research and—” 

“Don’t blame you. I do have a great ass,” Tim interjects. 

“You do,” Sasha agrees, grinning, “but stop fishing for compliments. Anyways, I couldn’t get you out of my head. Fairly run-of-the-mill office fantasy stuff at first. Getting bent over our desk and fucked. Or bending you over the desk, I’m not picky.” She smiles wider at Tim’s muffled groan. “Oh, you like that? There’s more. Thought about shoving you down, making you kneel under my desk and eat me out while I worked. Maybe if you were good, I’d jerk you off once I’d had enough. But maybe I’d just leave you.” 

“Jesus _Christ,”_ he says, and she laughs, imagining him stretched out naked on his unmade bed, one hand flung up to cover his reddening face and the other tensed around his cock. 

“Then we actually became friends and it was a little awkward to be fantasizing about you, even every once in a while. But, well. Couldn’t stop. Clearly it worked out fine in the end.” 

“Yeah, no kidding,” he gasps out. “God, why didn’t we—sooner—” 

“Hell if I know.”

“Wish you were here. With me. I’d—” His voice breaks off into a short, breathless noise before he continues. “I don’t know what. Anything. I’d lay you out on my bed, go down on you for as long as you wanted.”  
  
“As long as I wanted?” she asks, amused. Tries to keep her tone as even as possible even as she eases another finger inside and shivers at the sensation. 

“Yeah,” he responds without hesitation. “Wouldn’t—wouldn’t even touch myself until you told me to. I’d be—good.” 

“Doubt it,” she says. “You’ve never been good at staying still. Or doing what you’re told.” 

“I would be,” he insists. “For you.” 

She’s not sure whether to be horny or endeared about that, so she settles for both. “Sure you would. Then what?” 

“Then you’d ride me. Push me flat on my back and just—take me.” It verges on overwhelming, hearing Tim like this. Normally so verbose, he’s struggling to get words out, punctuated with little bitten-off breaths and whines. Intoxicating, knowing that she’s taken him to this point. Other than the small sounds Tim’s making, the silence stretches out a few minutes, both of them at a rare loss for words. The noises he’s making are muffled, probably by his palm. If she were in the same room, she’d take his hand off of his mouth, pin it down to the mattress if she had to. 

For now, though, she settles for just saying it. “Stop covering your mouth.” 

There’s the shadow of a laugh. “You know, most people say I talk too much. Make too much noise in bed.” 

“Well, they just don’t know how to appreciate it. And rest assured, if you ever get too loud when we’re fucking, I’m sure I can find a better use for your mouth.” An old line but a good one, if the way Tim’s breath quickens is any indicator. 

“How kind of you,” he snarks, but she knows him well enough to listen for the flustered strain of his voice, imagine his free hand clutching at his sheets. 

“I couldn’t imagine you having any complaints about it, no. Really, I’d be doing you a favor,” she tells him conversationally. “You’d have to be good then. And you want to be good, don’t you?” 

“Yeah,” he pants. “Yeah, I—” 

She shuts her eyes; she can feel herself getting close. “You are. You already are. You know that, right?” God, she hadn’t meant to be all—but she can’t bring herself to be angry now. Even as disjointed images of marked up skin and sweat and Tim’s lips shining-wet with her slick flash through her head, she’s full of unbearable fondness for him. His bad jokes and unexpected vulnerability and friendship right along with the dark eyes she can never quite get out of her head and the softness of his mouth and the sharp line of his jaw and the muscles in his thighs. 

His voice shakes. “Sash, I’m—” 

“You’re—so good, so good for me—” She crooks her fingers inside herself and exhales sharply. _“Please,_ Tim.” 

Over the phone, he lets out one last gasped-out moan, deafening in the silence of Sasha’s room, before going quiet except for the drag of his breath. She keeps on moving her fingers, eyes closed as if that’ll block out the slick noises and the quick, hitching intakes of breath. She’s always been quiet like this, and she wonders if Tim’s listening to her as intently as she’d been listening to him, straining to hear every sound. The thought sends a rush of heat through her and that, somehow, is what finally takes her over the edge with a gasp that she isn’t quite quick enough to stifle with her free hand. 

There’s about a minute of silence that could be described as contemplative, which is not a feeling Sasha particularly enjoys after orgasming, but there’s not much she can do about that. She listens to Tim’s uneven breathing as it slowly steadies over the roar of her own heartbeat in her ears. She still feels hot all over, a feeling that only intensifies as she pulls her fingers out of herself and wipes them on some tissues from the box she thankfully keeps on her nightstand. It’s probably too late to be embarrassed, even retroactively, but now she’s running over everything that she’s said and wondering if she just hang up and change her name and move away while she still has the chance—

“So…”

“Damn. I promised we’d talk after, didn’t I?” she asks rhetorically. 

He laughs, blessedly unoffended. “Yeah, uh—sorry for not saying anything, by the way. I think my soul left my body for a bit there.” 

“Ah. I had wondered. Well, there you go, I guess.” 

“Uh… thanks. That was—”

She snorts. _“Thanks?_ I didn’t lend you a tenner, we had phone sex.” 

“What else did you want me to say?” he demands, but she can hear the smile in his voice. 

“I don’t know!” she says defensively. A pause. “Do you want to do it again? Not right now, I know how dicks work, but...” 

“Over the phone?” he asks. 

“No,” Sasha says. “Not just over the phone.” She rolls over onto her side to look at the dark screen of her cell phone and wishes she could see his face. 

“Right,” he responds, voice soft. “Alright, yeah. I’ll… come over to yours tomorrow, then? If you’d like.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds really nice.” 

And it is. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! First time writing smut so I hope it wasn't too egregious, lol. Comments and kudos are great and very appreciated if you'd like to leave them!


End file.
